The Troll's House
by milesandmiles97
Summary: About a terrible troll named Andy, his female abductee named Beta and his telekinetic house who loves her. Based on "The True Bride" from The Story Teller by Jim Henson and the Brother's Grimm fairytale by the same name.
1. Part One

**I**

Once upon a time, there was a great troll by the name of Andy, who had a great house that was covered with scales and from both the outside and the inside of the house, one could see it visibly breathing. It was a living house. It was not just the sound of creaking, or the rush of wind about a chimney, of the kind that constitutes the breathing that old houses are commonly supposed to make, but a marked swelling and receding of the external walls of the house, along with the internal scaled wallpaper and brick, and a visible rise and fall of the old floor boards, all this was obvious about this house. Not just an empty whistle did the wind make during a storm, somewhere just outside of its windows, that can be easily explained away in most houses, but a human-like sigh did this house make, sometimes tinged with the hint of a deep voice.

Andy loved his house. He bragged about it often to his troll friends at the troll bar he visited on the outskirts of the village that the trolls loved to torment and to troll.

"Mur house," was how Andy would, without exception, begin his drunken bragging, "It is bigger and, I say, I do declare, it is smarter than any house as has been ever inhabited by man or troll." He smiled an ugly smile at the thought of his house.

To provide a demonstration of the cleverness of his house, Andy would continue, "Mur house, it keeps mur possessions in order, it does. Never was a house tidier. Mur bed is made of a morning, mur clothes appear in mur dresser, neatly like, mur house does it all.

"Mur house, it can control the things I keep in it. If I need something, mur house brings it to me, I needn't lift a toe."

"What about yer slave girl then, what use is she?" Would ask another of Andy's equally despicable troll friends, with a terrible scoff and an incredulous face. "I declare, what's a slave fer if yer house does it all."

It was no secret, afterall, that Andy kept a slave in the basement of this famed house. She had been a beautiful orphaned child he had lured away from the streets a number of years ago, where she had been sleeping for some weeks, waiting for the impending death of starvation or exposure that had awaited her there. Simply, he'd lured her away with the promise of a hot meal and a warm place to sleep, in exchange for domestic duties. And funnily enough, all of this was exactly what he'd delivered, but still she had the persistent feeling that she would have been better off on the street. Andy had named her Beta.

The abduction would have been an outrage or a scandal among the inhabitants of the village, had any of them cared much, or at all, for orphaned girls.

"Never you mind what a slave girl is fur." Said Andy, waving a hairy finger and lifting a warty eyebrow, sloshing half his brandy on the bar in the process. "Mur house is of better mind and conversation. Better use entirely, I declare, than mur slave girl, other than to look at. Mur house is, I won't deny, it is no beauty."

"But a house is of no mind and no conversation! Yer a mad troll, Andy." Rejoined Andy's troll friend, partly just to be difficult, since he had heard this story many times before and already knew the explanation. He had in fact witnessed the phenomenon of Andy's speaking house on many occasions during Andy's infrequent poker nights, during which they would play card games, gamble and laugh as Andy poked Beta with a long stick while she brought them drinks.

"Mur house is special, it speaks words straight into mur head! Mur house is cleverer than any troll!"- this was undeniably true and would not really be a difficult feat, trolls being exceptionally stupid and irrational - "I would not, I declare, I would not, be half the troll I am today without the advice of mur speaking house!" Here Andy banged his fist against the bar table and disturbed a number of other troll drinkers, who started up a mighty din of troll complaints, leading inevitably into a troll bar fight. It began with curses and smashing glasses and ended in blows.

A troll bar fight is a thing to behold, not just for its intense physicality, for trolls speak almost poetry in their insults, troll language contains almost a thousand different swear words, which I won't presume to bore you with here.

When the fight was over, Andy dragged his heavy, drunken body back towards his home.

He was of medium height for a troll, that is to say around seven feet tall, and he never fared too badly at bar fights. He couldn't say if he had won or not, which is the sign of a good fight. Trolls he had never spoken to before had joined in on his behalf, purely for the excitement, and no one had been outnumbered, which is also the sign of a good fight.

Andy had a weighty right fist, covered with hair and black nails, more closely resembling claws than human nails, that he used to great effect against any opponent, but most commonly Beta. Trolling was, after all, interchangeable with cruelty. He had long, greenish hair that he tamed in a knot at the back of his oblong skull, masses of protruding teeth and a formidable reek that he brought about with him everywhere, to the offense of even the most indecorous person and to the respect of even the dirtiest troll. He wore clothes that were aged and even rotting, his pants held up by suspenders over his bloated belly, but how they came to be rotting, no one would ever know, since his house would always arrange his clothes back into his dresser when he was done with them. It could only be suggested that his dresser was somewhat damp, or that the clothes had not been dry when they were stored away. Andy pretended not to care at all for his attire, but in reality, he was a connoisseur of fine repugnance, the beauty of his slave girl being the only exception. He was truly a despicable troll, and would have glowed with pride had he been so called.

Andy now made his way up a pebbly path towards his scaly house, a path that lead over a bridge before it reached its destination, as trolls have a particular predilection for bridges, and there was a necessity for at least one to be present on Andy's property.

His house was three stories tall, not including the basement. The rooms were capacious, the top story empty, as there were only two inhabitants living there and neither had many possessions. The house had a large windmill attached in an unsightly fashion to the side, only unsightly because it was so miss-matched with the rest of the construction. The windmill was not turning. There was, however, a delectable smell emanating from the windows, meaning that Beta was cooking, or had already finished.

Andy stomped up to the front doorstep and swung open the front door. It was freakishly soft and warm, like heated leather. Once back inside his house, Andy called out a greeting, "Allo, house."

His house replied, "Good day, Andy." And Andy shuddered with the pleasure that that cello-like deep voice inside his own head gave him. He slapped affectionately at the beams of the doorway as he threw the front door closed, and said, "It surely was, house, it surely was."

"BETA" The troll yelled from the short hallway that lead into the opened door of the livingroom, "Bring mur dinner, I'm home!" He then moved himself into the livingroom and took a seat. His couch had to be large enough to comfortably seat a troll, and this it certainly was. He sat back in a state of domestic bliss and flung his great dirty boots onto the coffee table. He took a newspaper out of his coat pocket and began to read it, while saying aloud mocking troll comments, to the reporter's expense, that the house would indulgently laugh at, with a rumbling from beneath the livingroom rug.

After a few minutes, a trapdoor in the corner of the room lifted. It was Beta who emerged into the room, like a ray of beauteous sunshine in a dark and ugly house, with its dark and ugly master. She was focused on carrying a tray with Andy's food on it, her concentration gave her an extra kind of sweetness that the troll looked upon greedily. Her long hair fell in front of her delicate face, rising up from the trapdoor like a mermaid from the surf.

She kicked up a bit more of the chain that was attached to her ankle so that she wouldn't trip on it, and carefully closed the trapdoor behind her. As she was walking towards the troll, the house inhaled deeply, making her rise a few inches and causing the gravy to spill from the pot that held it, over onto the troll's tray. She made a sound of annoyance, believing that the house had done it on purpose just to get her in trouble.

"Yur spilled mur gravy, clumsy wench." Said the troll as she deposited his food onto the coffee table.

"Get back with ye." He immediately began eating loudly. It little mattered what his food looked like in the end, when she was done preparing it; it was gone within a few minutes.

Beta returned again to the basement, to sit alone in a corner and dream away her time. It had been years since her abduction, more than a decade, enough time for her to grow to full adulthood and Beta was still kept on a chain there, mostly living alone in the one room, with little variety or change, little comfort and much cold. Here she would spend her days turning an enormous heavy wheel, that was not too heavy. Andy did not wish to maim her with hard work, nor did he wish to make her muscular. He liked her small and "Nice tur look at." He would say. The wheel seemed to simply keep her busy.

She was reminded often that her functional purpose was being "nice tur look at", so much so that the troll would declare that, were she to get old or fat, she would no longer be his slave and would become his dinner. He would stew her with potatoes and eat her brains as dessert. He would drink her blood as wine and make sausages from her innards. This was probably all lies. Beta would have to get very old indeed before she was no longer beautiful in comparison the hideous house and the troll with hair like sea weed and a face like a boar. It was hard even to say if Beta would be considered beautiful among average human women, her environs so conspired in her favour. If she had one fault, it was that she was slightly but permanently stooped over, either from leaning over her wheel, following it in a circle about the room, like a mouse's wheel, or perhaps from an emotional cause, a feeling of dejection and shrinking away. Her lovely hair, that she took great care of, was her best feature.

Beta did not know what the functional purpose of the wheel she worked at incessantly was, although she assumed, and was correct in assuming, that it was something like the purpose of a windmill, to pull up water from the ground.

Her daily labour was in fact what bought clean water into the house.

Her chain was just long enough that she could go up the stairs from the basement and out into the living room and also of course the kitchen. In the living room, she could sit in front of the fire that the house lit spontaneously when the weather was exceptionally cold, too cold for her to remain in the basement. Sometimes the trapdoor from her basement was kept locked, in such cases she would take refuge under her pile of rags that she slept on. If she was to try it twice, however, the trapdoor would almost always seem to unlock by itself. There was a trapdoor also in the kitchen, but Beta's chain was not long enough to allow her to go from the kitchen straight to the living room, so she had to detour through the basement.

It was a punishing, cold and very lonely life that Beta lead. And the house watched it all, too shy to lend her much company.


	2. Part Two

**II**

For some time following the disclosed night of the troll's bar fight, Beta's existence continued in much the same way. The trolls, who all looked and dressed very similar to Andy, but with slightly different coloured hair, would come to Andy's house and play poker. Some lived under bridges and were rendered even more hideous than Andy by harder living, which seemed to make them crueller still. They had moss in their hair and missing teeth. They would laugh as Andy beat her, and she would retreat, crying, back to her basement until she was called for another time.

Beta would promise herself daily that she would find somehow to escape.

When Andy was not home, and when she could conceivably have the time to spare, she would take the meat pulveriser from the kitchen and assiduously hammer away at her chains. This didn't seem to do much at all, the chains were very thick, but it gave Beta a sense of satisfaction. It gave her something to hope for. She didn't think too deeply about where she would go if she did break free. Beta was of a naturally dreamy and lethargic disposition, but when something did get her attention, she devoted herself to it completely and consumingly, she treated it like an obsession and almost forgot to think about the larger context or outcomes as she indulged in it, and this was certainly her attitude to hammering at the chain.

One day, while the troll was away, she was at this very task. She didn't need to worry too much about the troll catching her away from the wheel or bashing with abandon at her chains. He had said he was going out to get some food, which meant that he would go hunting with some of his troll friends (something they were not very good at) and come home with an armful of carrots, or a branch with some fruit on it, or something that had been dead for more than a day and was half dried out, that Beta then had to cook for hours to make edible even for a troll. It was rare if he did not come home drunk or smelling of liquor, as the troll party would usually make a detour to the pub on the way back home. He would be too tired or drunk to care what she was up to, and she was certain that, were he to catch her in the act of trying to break the chain, he would laugh, sit and watch her at it, as if her fruitless efforts were hugely entertaining.

She paused from her hammering, looked up over at wheel that she was neglecting and felt a deep frustration.

"Oh, I'll never get anything done if I have to turn that accursed wheel all day!" She said aloud. "If only I didn't have to turn it, so that I could work some more on my escape plan."

She flicked her hair over her shoulder and began hammering again. The sound of slow, grinding movement caught her attention and she stopped. The wheel had begun to turn by itself, at the same velocity it would have had Beta herself been turning it. There could only be one other entity who could have manifested this effort. "Thankyou, house!" Beta said, and her smile was so vibrant that the wheel began to turn even faster still.

Throughout the years that Beta had been in the service, or possession, of Andy, she had grown accustomed to his house, and the way that it could move things inexplicably. It had frightened her at first, her village told tales about ghosts and these were often terrifying tales, but whether it was actually a haunting or not, she'd quickly learnt that the force that allowed the house to move things at least didn't appear to be cruel or malicious. In any case, it didn't directly hurt, starve or overwork her the way Andy did.

This event, however, made her begin to question her old assumption that the house didn't care a whit for her, that it was Andy's best companion and solely did his bidding. She had been surprised that the house hadn't before warned Andy that she spent some of the time that he was away hammering at her chains and dreaming of freedom, and had guessed that the house had no intelligence of what she was up to in the basement, and no power in its own underground room. But even down here, the walls breathed or sighed as they did in the livingroom. Indeed, there was something lizard-like, scale-like and cold about the bricks of the walls of the basement. They were uncannily life like and Beta had even thought she'd seen the walls tremble sometimes, especially while she was changing her clothing. Sometimes she'd been awakened by the floor shaking at night and noticed that in her sleep, she had moved her hand so that it was pressed on the house's floorboards.

* * *

The above is merely one example of the house's philanthropy when it came to Beta. On another occasion, the house had taken note that Beta was beginning to look pallid and thin. This had been after several nights of Andy returning home with nothing but bruises from his troll fights and a sack full of roadkill. Beta simply could not eat this meat. No matter how she cooked it, slow cooked it for hours, or added as many spices as a stomach could reasonably be expected to tolerate, it had a lingeringly putrid smell and she made no attempt to eat it. She had been living on nothing but liquids and paltry scraps for more than two days.

The house fretted on this for a while. It watched her look forlornly at the dead possum or rat or flat toad she pulled out of Andy's bag day after day and watched her as she set about to skinning it, flicking away maggots with profound disgust.

The kitchen was probably the biggest room in the house. The walls were covered in purple tiles that Beta would have to clean regularly because the soot from the open fireplace would accumulate and make the room even darker. The fireplace was the biggest feature of the room and was commonly monopolised by a large pot in which Beta would either boil water, or prepare the soups and stews that she specialised in. The kitchen table that she worked at was built for a seven-foot troll rather than a woman her size and as a result she couldn't reach anything that was placed in the centre and the house would subtly move things over so that this was seldom a problem.

"I bring yur food." Said Andy, when Beta had valiantly brought up the issue with him, at the risk of a sound beating. "Yur don't like it, yur can catch yur own. There's plenty rats in the basement."

When it saw Beta eying off a rat as it beetled across the basement floor, finally the house decided on an action. It had greeted Andy in the morning, with the usual forced merriment that Andy so enjoyed.

"May I suggest," Said the house, it's windows flicking thoughtfully as it considered what to say next, "That you find some more vegetables today. There are some mushrooms just between the trees that line the woods to the left of my front aspect. I know they are not poisonous and could be used in a soup. I would simply suggest that you are not looking well, and would speculate that you are beginning to suffer malnutrition. The girl is looking particularly unhealthy, and should be eating more if she is to be working all day."

"Quite right, quite right." Said Andy. He stretched his troll arms, that were long enough for his fingers to drag on the floor while he was walking, above his troll head. "Ur've been neglecting mur food stocks." He stood up from his bed and pulled on a pair of troll pants that were black and hairy in places that they were not originally meant to be from rotting.

He did so value the opinion of his house. Otherwise he would have thrown a mighty troll tantrum, had someone been questioning his appearance, his health and the wellbeing of his slave. After some grunting, and some good natured complaints about his audacious house, and some yelling at Beta until she made him his breakfast, the troll finally left.

As it was, Andy returned that afternoon with not only the mushrooms, but also flour, butter, milk, eggs and apples that he had bought from the village market.

"Practically spoil yur. Don't yur say I don't take care of ye." He said, flinging the sack at Beta, where she was standing, cleaning the kitchen table when he got home.

Beta made bread from the flour, with scraps of yeast and salt from the cupboard, fried the eggs and the mushrooms and was most pleased.

Late that night, when the troll was fast asleep upstairs, his snores mingling with the sound of the rain pattering outside and cleaning away the accumulated debris from the roof of the house, which had been beginning to make the house feel quite uncomfortable, Beta was still awake. She arose from the rags of her bed and crawled over to the wall of the basement. She placed a dainty hand on the eerily life like bricks that she usually shrank away from, the walls being cold and clammy and unsettling.

She spoke in a whisper, "Thankyou dear house, I know it's you that has saved me from starvation. I owe you dearly for your kindness." She had after all heard Andy's complaints, and knew immediately that the house had intervened on her behalf.

She went back to bed, settled beneath the rags, closed her eyes and fell into as comfortable a sleep as would have been possible in the circumstances, no longer with an aching hunger to keep her awake. She didn't notice that the walls were swelling slightly, straining inwards, as though trying to touch her again.

Her tender words were little, but they were a balm on the house's lonesome, melancholic heart. It turned them over in its mind, drew them out into speeches, into declarations of love and constancy.

There she was, a slumbering mass of soft body, locked away deep in the embrace of his basement. And alas! The house had no body, though he wanted one terribly and felt jealous even of the troll for his form and his freedom. His foundations were secured to the earth on every side. He had no body and nobody but a vulgar troll for a friend, and not a soul to confide in. This thought caused the house the acutest misery. The rain was beginning to stop. It dribbled down the front windows of the house, leaving streaks of dirt behind, like great tears.


	3. Part Three

**III**

It was a normal weekday, Beta was at work turning her wheel, Andy had left, supposedly to torment the villagers, and the house was in deep, philosophical thought.

Beta's arm was starting to ache from holding up her chain so it wouldn't get tangled around the wheel, so she left her task after the first half hour and set to hammering at her chain, the jarring, rhythmic clangs getting her nowhere once again, although she had found a dent in one of the chain links, and swore that the screws that attached it to the wall looked looser than they had before. Subsequently, she had pulled at the chain until it began to hurt both her hands and her ankle, to which the chain was fastened.

As had become the custom, the house had taken over and was turning the wheel with a soothing regularity. Beta had called them a team and to the house, who was much stronger than the diminutive Beta, it was barely an effort at all. Lately Andy had never once run out of water, which had him in a much better mood. He was kinder to Beta, but not much, as his kindness was closer to human callousness, but she had not been hungry since the last famine.

When he returned that evening, he went to find Beta down in the basement, something that was unusual as he usually just bellowed for her from the living room. He ambled down the stairs of the basement and came upon Beta as she was taking a nap. "BETA" He bellowed, abruptly, Beta's head came up immediately from the surprise, "asleep in the afternoon, like, while Ur'm out working. Get up, I brought something fur yur." He was carrying three sacks. When he dropped them at Beta's feet, feathers flew out of the largest one, which was enormous.

"I got a task fur yur. Yur seem to be getting better at the wheel, and Ur was concerned yur weren't having enough tur do. Here's two sacks full ur feathers, here's a sack full ur pillow cases, yur put the long feathers in three ur the cases and the small feathers in the rest. Make some money, like. Sew them up when yur done."

Beta sighed, looking at the feathers. It would be a fiddly task. A single breath of air made the feathers drift away.

"None ur yur cheek." Said Andy, hearing the sigh. "I expect water tur run tomorrow as well, since yur so good at yur wheel, and the cases sorted, like, else yur can be expecting a beating. And if Ur find a single loose feather, Ur will be most displeased."

"Well," Said Beta, when the troll went back upstairs, "This looks straightforward enough. If the house will turn the wheel, I should manage to get the feathers sorted by tomorrow afternoon, if I start immediately after dinner."

She made the meal, served it, ate alone in the kitchen and then cleaned up after herself. After which, she returned to the basement.

Her task turned out to be far harder than she had imagined. There were ten pillow cases in total. The two sacks of feathers were so tightly packed that each would have contained pounds of feathers and sorting them was dreary.

"Oh, such a task! These beastly feathers are flying everywhere." Beta said. The room was covered in them, they would drift into the flame of Beta's candles and cause an awful smell.

It was well past midnight when Beta realised that she couldn't focus anymore. She had filled a quarter of one pillow with the long feathers, and three thirds of the second pillow with the more abundant, tiny, soft feathers. She went to bed.

It was the next morning, gloomy and stale was the basement. The wheel was turning.

"Did I sleep too long, house?" Said Beta, more as a statement than a question, as the house had never answered her before.

But to her surprise, on this occasion it did. "It's nearly midday." Said the house.

"Oh, why didn't you wake me up? I have so much work to do!" Cried Beta, pulling herself up immediately.

She looked around, expecting to find the room covered with feathers, the tiniest draft from the cracks in the trapdoor causing them to spread far and wide, expecting to find the empty pillow cases in the heap where she left them.

Instead, the pillows were lined neatly against the wall, all of them were filled, the three empty sacks were folded and a needle and thread were waiting for her on top of them.

"I have no experience of sewing." Said the house, "I'll leave that to you, but I promise the feathers have been carefully sorted and not a single one has gone loose."

"Oh, you didn't have to, house. This is too much; it must have taken so long!"

"I have no hands to fumble with, no eyes to strain with, only a mind. It wasn't a difficult task for me. What labour you could barely make a dent in, while working into the small hours of the morning, I can finish in barely an hour." Said the house in dull explanation.

Beta gave the house a delighted curtsey. "But you cannot sew, so I have you there." She said, and set about to completing the pillows.

She chattered away to the house as she worked, excited to have someone to talk to. She was talking about what she remembered about her parents and how she survived for so long on the street. "Some nights, I slept on the doorstep of a house, because they had a fire, and some of the heat came out under the door, until someone opened the door in the morning and it hit me. They chased me away with a broom and told me not to come back. Sometimes, I'd hear wolves in the woods, I'd climb a tree because they frightened me so much. They roam around the village at night, looking for scraps. They aren't so afraid of people or trolls that food won't entice them right into villages."

"But didn't you have some other family or friends that could have taken you in?"

"No. I knew of none. My family were members of the village, but no one had the room or the food to spare for a beggar girl. I'd say the troll is the closest I've come to either family or friend since my parents died."

They carried on in silence after that. A few feathers still got away from Beta as she worked, but finally all the pillows were secured.

When they were stacked neatly in a corner and the basement was immaculate, Beta went upstairs to prepare the dinner. She made Andy a feast of dry possum meat with her extra time.

He came home in a very bad mood indeed. His stamping shook the basement ceiling and he jumped a bit for good measure, just to let Beta share in his misery.

"BETA. Bring mur dinner, I'm home." Said Andy.

As she did sometimes three times a day, Beta climbed the stairs to the trapdoor with her plate of food. She carefully pulled the trapdoor back and glanced nervously at Andy, through her hair. He was absorbed in whittling away at thick stick with a pocket knife, leaving shavings on the floor. She placed the tray on the table before him and turned to go.

"Don't yur think I've forgotten the pillows, now." Said Andy. "Get with ye and bring them."

She took two trips bringing the pillows to Andy. When she was done, he grunted at them, neither impressed, nor unimpressed, through his mouthful of food. They were all perfect, not a feather came free.

"Ur'll have tur find yur something else then, if yur so clever. Clever enough to do all this on yur own." His look suggested that he did not in fact believe that she had done it on her own. She was struck by it; did he know that the house was helping her?

"Staring at me dolefully, like. Begone with ye." He flung his plate and it smashed at her feet and she hurried from the room, before he might decide to beat her, something that such a temper often culminated in.

When she settled back into her bed rags that night, she thought some more on Andy and the paranoia of a possible betrayal.

It had sunk into Beta's mind lately, during the nights when she could not sleep, that if the house could do things for her with such ease, surely it could release her as well. This thought caused her no end of unrest, and for the sake of self-preservation, she kept in mind that maybe the house was not entirely looking out for her best interests. It's favours, after all, weren't enough to eradicate her sense of the unearthly scales on the walls, the breathing interior, the way it seemed to see everything and could speak directly to Andy without her hearing it and, of course, her own sense of being persistently and constantly watched and scrutinised.


	4. Part Four

**IV**

The days delved into one another with little difference to distinguish them. The strange house stood, with its unsightly windmill, on the patch of bare land that was carved into dark woodland and atop a slight hill as it weathered these increasingly cold days of early winter. Sometimes pieces of ice could be seen flowing down the stream which Andy's bridge crossed over. A small pond out the back of the house had grown a layer of thin ice from the cold.

Frost had covered the windows one night, and the poor house had to strain to get them open again, and when it succeeded, the windows flew up with a painful thud, but on the days that it actually snowed, the scenery looked quite pretty. The snow covered the scales of the house and made them look like normal bricks. Beta could look out the living room window at Andy's little bridge and imagine that she was in a fairy tale, that maybe a handsome prince would come across the bridge and save her.

Beta had woken up one morning and had not been able to get to sleep again. It was not just the cold that kept her awake. Over the past few days or weeks she'd been feeling increasingly restless. She hadn't been turning the wheel as much, as the house often took over, and she seemed to need more to do to stretch her muscles with, apart from trying to break her chain.

She would pace up and down the stairs sometimes when Andy wasn't home. When she got to the end of her chain, she would stretch as far as she could to see down the hallway, into other rooms of the house and the house would open doors for her so that she could see inside, or describe in detail all the things in the rooms of the house that she couldn't reach and the general floor plan. This certainly wasn't the most exciting game, but she would laugh when the house described some of the things in Andy's room, like a rotting banana peel in the bottom of his closet, used to delicately scent his fine collection of mouldering overalls, or the mud he kept in a jar to dab under his armpits, to remind him of the days that he used to live under a bridge. "Armpit mud is the most elegant of troll decadence." Said the house, attempting to mimic Andy and failing miserably.

On this particular morning, Beta looked up at the black ceiling, with blacker shadows seeming to drift across it, or at least across her own eyes as they searched the dark. She said in a whisper, in a whim of the moment, "House, why haven't you helped me to get free, after all this time?"

Moments passed and the house did not respond, although Beta felt a faint twitch from beneath the floorboards beneath where she lay.

"Surely you could release me from this chain if you wanted to."

Still the house pretended not to hear, and Beta rolled over and tried to go back to sleep.

The house was turning the wheel one day sometime later, drifting away in thought. It was watching Beta distractedly as she dozed on the floor, with a book beside her bed. Her health hadn't been great of late, she looked ill and had lost weight again, as well as being aloof and almost cold with the house for some time.

In an attempt to thaw Beta's coldness towards him, the house brought her a book, down from one of his unused top rooms, where it had been hidden away in a pile of junk. It had only a few sketches inside it, and after flicking through it a few times, Beta finally admitted that she wasn't a good reader and could read little more than a few words. The book lay there abandoned beside her bed rags ever since.

Perhaps Beta's moroseness was of such a concern to the house because it reminded him uncomfortably of a goose that Andy had kept some time ago, in the yard about the house, to lay eggs and to fatten it up enough to eat. The goose had been on its own as Andy was away for most of the day and only went outside briefly to feed it. Geese are sociable, as most birds are, and this particular goose had gotten very sad and sick before it died. The house still dreamt about the goose from time to time and still felt very sad for it. These days it felt even more sad for Beta.

The house thought deeply some more, while it was occupied at such a mindless task as turning the wheel. Perhaps it was variety that Beta was lacking, or a freedom to go where she chose to? It couldn't be loneliness that was ailing her, after all, she had him to talk to for company if she wanted, and that was more than the goose had ever had.

But could he handle the guilt of seeing her so unhappy? Humans were not like houses or trolls; they are of lesser mettle. Indeed, humans are grown for nine months and then they are simply born, they are designed by nature, who seems to shrug her shoulders and say "good enough" when she is done; comparatively, the making of houses and buildings takes careful planning and attention to detail, they are often designed by experts and built by still more experts. If the house was taken care of, he could live for hundreds of years, like the ancient abbeys, castles and manors he'd read of, braving the elements with no food and no need of drink. The oldest troll was said to have lived beneath a bridge for three centuries. A man on the other hand, could die of a head cold. The house did not know what he might do if Beta died. Humans were of a finer disposition than houses. Humans need so much to maintain their happiness, especially when they are young and energetic as Beta was, and it was undeniable that she had very little to do here.

The house had a vague idea forming. It mulled over it some more, and then finally, when Andy was away and would be for hours, the house spoke directly to Beta, in the most charming voice possible.

"My darling Beta," it said, "I have long watched your sufferings and taken pity on you. There is a key to your freedom that the troll keeps in the living room, it is above the fireplace, on the shelf and hidden beneath a brick. Andy will be away for hours and your chain is long enough to reach it. I am loath to seeing you chained up like an animal."

There was an awful silence for a moment and the house held its breath. For Beta, this had come as a most unexpected shock; she hesitated for a moment. Such an easy freedom seemed too good to be true, and yet she could imagine Andy leaving the key within her own reach, as a kind of cruel private joke, her freedom being so close and hidden so simply.

Beta thought of the brick she had passed over many times, examining the strange possessions Andy had there on the greenish bookshelf that flanked the fireplace. He had a collection of dirty-looking stones from the creek bed, a pile of mollusc shells from the market, oddly, he had an old book of trollish dental surgery and a plaited lock of yellow hair that Beta was not sure she wanted to know the origin of. Most interestingly of all, he had a Roman-style bust of a severe-looking troll, leering out at the inhabitants of the living room as if it might burst to life and yell obscenities like its living counterpart, the master of the house so often did; but there near the centre of the shelf was that accursed brick, so placed just to mock her.

Even so, accustomed as she was to a life of cruelty and privation, Beta did not at first consider the house a trustworthy resource of information. Despite everything, she still had it in her head that the house was the pawn of Andy. And why tell her now, out of the blue, when the house had been "watching her sufferings" for years?

"Should I trust you?" She said, dropping her hammer on the floorboards, making them shudder with pain for a moment, "Could you be trying to get me in trouble?"

"No, no, I love you, I pity you." It was out in a moment, with nary a forethought. The house trembled with passion and fear, "I think only of your wellbeing."

That a house should be in love with her seemed even more unbelievable still. She was filled with paranoid imaginings- that there would be some kind of dye on the brick, that would stain her hand, and then Andy would know. That the house would somehow warn Andy, and she would be caught in the act. That it would be some other trick she could barely imagine for its elaborateness. "I think you're like those awful trolls," She said, "you get a sinister joy from seeing me in pain or fear, misery or humiliation."

Said the house, after a moment of thought, "If you won't believe me, there's nothing I can do."

They sunk into silence from hereon. Beta caught the wheel by one of its handles and began to turn it herself. A terrifying thought occurred to her while she was turning it, walking in a circle around it; perhaps it was the freedom that she dreamed about so regularly that she was so deeply unsure about, perhaps even to the point of reluctance. In any case, where would she go if she did escape? The house and the troll had been all she'd known for so many years.

* * *

As the days passed, the house became increasingly cloying with Beta. Kitchen utensils would move towards her, before she even needed them. She would be awakened regularly by the wheel turning. The house would timidly ask her if she needed anything, and she, having been softened by time and more sympathetic towards the house would reply, "No thank you, house."

She woke up one day with flowers beside her bed. She hadn't seen any in such a long time, they became something of intense fascination to her, despite the fact that they did not look quite healthy- it was winter after all.

"Where did you get them from?" She said.

"I have a small greenhouse to the back of me. Andy used to use it to grow food in the colder seasons, but he forgot about it some time ago."

She took a cup from the kitchen and some water and used them to keep the flowers in, placing them beside her bed rags where she could see them as soon as she woke up.

Later that afternoon, with their old friendship re-established, Beta looked over at the book and said, "House, would you mind reading this to me?"

"Of course." Said the house, quite thrilled at her renewed attention and he began to read, the pages seeming to turn of their own volition, while she turned the wheel. It turned out to be a romance novel which Beta found to be highly entertaining.

For such a small gesture, the flowers did seem to brighten up Beta's mood a bit and this, along with a few nights spent in front of the living room fire, rather than down in the cold basement, which Andy had allowed her to do lately, had her back to her old health again.

Something that distracted the house, however, was that one day Andy had been busy hammering something into the outside wall at the back of itself. It looked almost like a closed hook for a heavy chain.


	5. Part Five

**V**

"What were you putting on my wall outside?" Asked the house of Andy, as he was preparing to go to bed later that night.

"A hook fur a chain."

"But what is it for?"

"Tur put mur slave girl to work, that's what it's fur." Said Andy in an elevated voice, his patience was dramatically decreased when he was tired, even with his beloved house.

"But it's far too cold outside."

"Never you mind." Said the troll. "It's cold enough fur me to work every day, why shouldn't she? Ur, who works tirelessly fur yur very upkeep! Here yur are, looking out fur her interests, again. Never mind mur best interests and hard work."

The house didn't enquire what this hard work Andy did all day was, although it wanted to, and Andy settled into bed and, despite his prior agitation, he was snoring loudly minutes later.

Andy got up the next morning, ordered his breakfast to be made and then pottered around the house for a while. He was in good spirits with the house again. The house had flicked through Andy's newspaper before Andy had awoken and when Andy finally sat down on the couch to read it, the house was the first to make mocking troll comments. This delighted Andy so much that he gave the floor hearty pats between his laughter.

The house noted, however, that Andy was acting oddly. He had taken an instrument from the kitchen and put it in his back pocket.

He eventually came down into the basement where Beta was turning the wheel and the house watched in anticipation as he went down the stairs.

"Stop." Said Andy and this sudden order and his appearance made Beta jump, not having heard him descend into the room. She dropped the wheel and moved away from it, already with a feeling of worry. Andy crossed the room and gathered up most of her chain in one large, clawed hand. "Undo that, house." Said Andy, pointing at the hook on the wall that held Beta's chain.

Nothing happened at first, and the moment seemed to stretch on awkwardly. "HOUSE" Bellowed Andy, stamping a foot.

Beta watched in dismay as the metal loop of the hook bent until it was opened enough for the chain to fall free with a devastating clank upon the floor.

Andy paused, and then said, pointing at the rags Beta slept on, "Yur might be needing one of them."

Beta took one without hesitation and then followed Andy up the stairs, for the first time in years, through the front door and out into the open. He led her on, tugging unnecessarily at the chain and almost pulling her ankle out from under her. It wasn't snowing, but it was bitingly cold, especially on her poor feet that had only thin socks to protect them. Andy led her around the house to the back. She saw the greenhouse and the windmill exactly how she had imagined them from the house's descriptions. She had forgotten how ugly the house was from the outside. It looked bigger and more stately, the three stories reaching up, higher than the trees that lined the opening of the woods. It loomed over them in a sinister manner, with its gloomy, old-fashioned and eye-like latticed windows. As she looked into them, she saw the lower panes twitch and thought that, had the house been human, the twitch would have been his eyes flicking away from hers as if in guilt or shame.

Andy dropped Beta's chain beside the hook. "Join them, house." Said Andy.

The house, who couldn't bear to perform the same task again, said "My strength is greatly depleted outdoors, You'll have to do it yourself."

Andy rumbled and grumbled and then grabbed up Beta's chain and the hammer he had negligently left there on the ground the night before, and started bashing the hook to close it over the chain link. "Mur house can talk to me when Ur'm all the way in the village, but it can't close a hook. Mur house can perform multiplications, but it can't do nothing _outdoors_."- Grumbled Andy, who found maths or indeed most kinds of logic impossible, and multiplications a minor miracle.

Andy finished hammering and stood up. "Very well." He said, "Yur'll follow me over here."

Beta followed him until he reached the edge of the pond, with a thin layer of ice making it shine. Andy took the kitchen tool out of his pocket and hit the ice smartly, and the magically still surface was shattered.

"Since yur so clever, yur'll take all the water from the pond by the time Ur return home, using this." He brandished the instrument at her, which Beta now recognised as a kitchen spoon, or sieve, since it had holes in it. "All the water, mind, or yur can be expecting a beating." He threw the spoon at her and it hit her painfully in the chest, although she caught it. He then marched off and left her there alone.

Beta looked down at the pond and sighed. It was not a large pond, but she knew the task was impossible. "Oh," She said to herself, "I couldn't do this job even if the spoon didn't have holes in it." She gathered her rag about her, crouched on the ground and began to use the sieve to fling water from the pond, beginning with the clumps of floating ice.

She looked around from time to time as she worked, the coldness didn't take away the novelty of being outside. Beta thought the birch trees marking entry to those dark woods were unearthly beautiful, even when they shook periodically with a wretched wind that chilled her by the time it reached her.

She kept at her task for ages. Stupidly, at one point she even used her hands to scoop at the water and found that this quickly made them painfully numb. Her foolishness had caused her body temperature to drop drastically and she had to huddle herself up tighter still into the rag. Her shivers got more violent with the more time that passed, and the cold began to infiltrate her more deeply until she felt weak.

A crow flew over the house, over the line of trees and then disappeared into the distance, and, distracted for a moment, Beta wondered where it was going and felt a yearning to see all the innumerable things that it was going to see, that she would never have a chance to see. She would never see them, because she was going to freeze to death here on the ground, before Andy got a chance to return. Of course, she thought, he was only forcing her to do this, because he wanted to be rid of her. What need would he have for emptying this pond otherwise? And perhaps it would be a good thing…

"Get up Beta." Said the house, softly, straight into Beta's mind, as if it had been reading her morbid thoughts. "I'll undo your chain and you can go back inside."

Beta ignored him and hastened her weak scooping at the water with the spoon.

"Andy won't be home for hours, and you're already half frozen. I've lit a fire for you in the living room."

"Don't speak to me." Said Beta.

Behind her, she felt a movement of the chain and a thud, presumably as the chain was released from the hook and hit the ground. She ignored it at first, but finally glanced over to check, and it was indeed the chain that had come undone. She stayed where she was.

"Don't be a fool, I can get this task done easily for you." Said the house.

"You could do the job for me, just like you could release the chain? Just like you could have set me free all this time?"

"But I offered you the key, in the living room, Beta. You didn't trust me."

She continued to ignore him. She proudly sat there for a few more minutes continuing to scoop at the pond. Of course, most of the water she was scooping was simply flowing straight back into it again, but she convinced herself that she could see a great difference in the level of the water. This made her think that she could afford to take a break, and, since she was getting very tired, she curled up by the edge of the pond and went to sleep.

Lord knows, she had survived for long enough in the cold on the streets of the village to know that this wasn't a good idea, and that if a person went to sleep in such cold it was likely that they would never wake up again.

As she sank off to sleep, she thought murkily about the key in the living room. It was a trick, she was glad she had paid no attention to it. It might come alive and stab at her.

* * *

After an indeterminable amount of time, Beta stirred and then awoke, still alive. She was in front of the fire in the living room. Here it was blissfully warm and comfortable.

She sat up, her rags fell from around her and she looked around. Her chain stretched down into the trapdoor as usual and she gave it a tug to check if it had been secured. It had been. Had Andy brought her back inside then, or had it been the house? Perhaps she had dreamt it all.

She stood up. Her feet tingled and there was a pain about her toes and fingers, parts of her where the cold had been particularly harsh. It had not been a dream then.

She noticed the brick there, just where it had been described to her, on the shelf above the fire place, and she reached over and picked it up and looked beneath it. There was nothing there. With a flare of anger, she was tempted for a moment to throw the brick through a window, but instead she dropped it on the floor.

"And it's now that you want the key?" Said the house, "I suppose you'll tell me I should have just left you outdoors?"


	6. Part Six

**VI**

There was a slight draft from down the chimney that made the fire flicker, momentarily darkening the room about Beta.

"Was the key ever there at all?" She said.

"Of course it was."

"What will Andy do to me when he comes home and finds me inside?"

"I'll deal with that."

"But I don't understand," Said Beta, more defeated now that the conviction from her annoyance was dwindling, she walked over and sat on the oversized, velvet couch. "why would you take the key away? Why offer it to me at all?"

"You seemed unhappy. I suppose I wanted to offer you more freedom, but not for you to leave." Said the house. Beta was struck by his honesty and wasn't sure at first how to respond.

They were disturbed at that moment by a sound coming from out the front door, a rattle and creak as it was pulled open and Andy came inside, along with a breath of chilling wind. Beta jumped up off the couch.

"Allo house." Said Andy, hanging up his troll coat on a hook in the hallway.

"Good day Andy." Said the house, "I brought Beta back in doors for you." Having pretended not to be able to close the hook while outside, the house realised his mistake immediately, but Andy with his normal obtuseness didn't seem to notice anything.

"Ah," Said Andy and stomped into the living room. "Ah," He said, looking at Beta and rubbing at his chin which was barely visible beneath his protruding teeth, smiling a wicked smile. "Yur got the job done then?"

Beta looked at Andy's boots in a submissive fashion, knowing it was better not to meet his gaze or else risk incurring his wrath. "I'm surprised I did. It took me hours." She said, also knowing it would please Andy to think he had set her a difficult and arduous task. "I almost froze to death."

Andy chortled to himself. "It were a hard task I set. It were a clever task. Well. Well, get with ye and get mur dinner then."

She hurried away, back down into the basement. Beta was expecting Andy to be in a rage, but he was calm all that night, apart from ordering her to bring food, he didn't bother her again. Perhaps a good day had him in a better mood than normal? She went to bed early and lay awake in the dark for a while, thinking about what she would do the next day and what she would say to the house.

It was wrong, she should be outraged, but she found herself almost gratified by the house's attentions. She had never been loved before. Even if it was a smothering, unnatural kind of love. Although she was resolute now about her plan to escape despite anything else.

This resolution stayed with her until the next morning. She woke up, pulled herself out of her rags and made her way to the kitchen, without needing to be yelled at.

"Good morning." Said the house, and Beta muttered something in return and wondered at the boldness of the house, speaking to her as if nothing had happened after the events of the past day.

She made a very quick breakfast of bread and butter for the troll, which made the house interject, "If that's for Andy, you needn't bother making it, since he got up early and left already."

Beta nodded and took the food down to the basement, where the wheel was already turning, and ate it herself.

"It's starting to snow outside." Said the house, "You should look, I know how much you like the snow."

Beta nodded again, ignoring the advice. From the coldness of the previous day she had been expecting it to snow soon anyway, but it seemed another hindrance to her ideas of escape. She sat down on the rags and stretched out her legs out in front of her, idly eyeing off the chain around her left ankle. She had a thoughtful look about her that set whatever it was that constituted the house's heart a flutter- perhaps it was the fire place, where the fire was already burning. In the living room it seemed to flicker and get warmer for a moment.

"The fire's on in the living room." Said the house, "I can open the windows for you, so once you're up there you can look out if you like."

"Very well." Said Beta, but still she didn't intend to move. A stagnant sadness had come over her again; she was haunted by the thought that providence seemed to have abandoned her to her fate, it threw another hurdle in her way.

They stayed silent for a while. The house agonised over how to break the silence and how to win her over again without irritating her. It wondered what she was thinking of. It was too late, he had been too foolish, she felt suffocated, she would never trust him again; the thought was becoming an insupportable torment to the troubled house. Ah, it was a hopeless situation to begin with. Ah, the cruelty of creating a house who could wish he was a man!

Finally, he tried again. "What can I do for you, Beta? Ask me for anything."

Still nothing.

"Beta… Beta, why can't you understand me? I would do anything." The house said this out loud, for the first time, in a soft voice that crept through the floorboards and down, seeping into the basement. The floor rose and fell passionately. Beta only smiled to herself.

The voice continued: "You wonder if I'm lying to you? You wonder how I can love you when I know so little of you? Have I not been here all the time you have? I know all your habits, all your mannerisms by heart. You hardly speak during the day, having no one but yourself and a house to talk to, but I've dreamt of your voice so often it's as familiar as my own. Rather, you're the one who doesn't know anything about me.

"I have a dark past as you have, perhaps more so- I am much older than you, with as little knowledge of comfort or happiness. My maker- my mother, if you will, was a witch. She was a wicked witch like no other of time, she wasn't kind to me; no matter, but she did awful things within these walls." The house, paused as if remembering or composing itself, before resuming, "Sacrifices, tortures, dark spells, devilry. I wasn't brave or strong then, I am stronger now, I am still not brave, but I didn't do anything about it. In the end, she had a debt from gambling or something like that to a troll by the name of Andy and she sold me to pay it."

Beta was looking at the floor as though listening.

"I don't know what happened to her, but I hope she is long dead now. And you see how Andy lets my insides rot. He is nothing to what she was, but ours has not been a pleasant cohabitation."

"You get on well enough. He seems to love you." Said Beta, finally.

"If he cares for me it is one sided. We get along out of necessity."

There was a silence again.

"I left your key on the table in the living room." Said the house, in a kind of surrender and seeing no other way around it.

Beta went from lethargy to alertness straight away. She gathered up her chain and got to her feet.

"Again? If this is a trick…" She said, and she turned to the basement stairs, ascending them and letting her threat fade away. She opened the trapdoor slightly and peered out, hesitating. She had to take the chance, she had thought about it often enough. As if she had been taking too long to make a decision, something came at her as if thrown from across the room. When it landed at her feet, she realised it was the key. She took it, undid the lock around her ankle and the chain clattered on the floor, freeing her for the first time in years.

"When the troll comes home, I'll open a hole in the floor and lock him in." Said the house.

Beta didn't care either way and she told him so. She went to the front door and found it locked, so she began searching for another exit. She went back into the living room to check if the windows had been opened. They were still closed and stubbornly would not open, no matter how she pulled at them, or opened and closed the clasps. Exasperated, Beta ran a hand through her hair, and the house watched, despairing that he could not catch it up and kiss it.

"No, no." Said the house, "You can stay here, you don't need to leave. You can be the master of me. I can change for you." His voice was still not in her head, it rumbled deeply throughout the house.

She ignored it and searched the back rooms, but could find no other door that might lead her outside. She rushed up the stairs to the second floor, shaking all the way, thinking perhaps there was a key to the lower windows or the front door hidden somewhere.

Upstairs, like the house had described to her, was a short hallway, leading off to a few different doors, standing out promisingly with dark wood against the ugly maroon and green wallpaper. She tried the one furthest from the stairs and to her right, that she knew was Andy's bedroom.

"I warn you, if you won't stay here with me, who loves you, forever, then I'll call the troll home!" Cried the house, in an echoing voice.

Inside, Andy's room was very tidy, the walls were panelled with carved wood with a gothic pattern, against one wall stood a dresser, against the other was a ratty looking troll bed and there was a large window in the farthest wall. When Beta tried the window, it opened straight away, unlike the ones downstairs. She leaned out and looked down to the ground below, trying to gauge whether or not it was too far to jump. Above her, the window made a loud banging sound, as if threatening to close on her shoulders.

"You wouldn't dare!" She said, and it stopped immediately.

She had decided not to jump, pulled herself back inside and, after checking in Andy's dresser and finding nothing of use to speak of, apart from an old troll coat that she threw over her arm, in preparation for the cold outside, and checking in his revolting bedside table and also finding nothing, she went back down stairs again. She stopped to consider the windows in the living room a second time, and looked over at the brick there on the shelf. She picked it up.

"I care for you, I adore you frightfully." Said the house, intuitively knowing what she was going to do. "Oh… oh, do not leave me!"

She pulled the brick and her arm back and with a forward thrust, flung it through the closest window. It sailed straight through, and the window pane shattered.

The floor spasmed beneath her from a shock of pain and the deep voice wailed.

She used the brick to tap enough loose glass to enable her to climb through the opening, without cutting herself. She swung a foot out through the window.

Really, the house wouldn't do anything to stop her from leaving, and Beta knew that it wouldn't. She knew that the threat to call Andy had been a bluff. There was something rather pathetic about it really, that strung at her sympathy. She envisaged herself for a moment staying here after all, as the mistress of the house, with somewhere safe to protect her from the cold and perhaps being the first kind owner the house ever had. She could establish herself in the village and make herself dignified, start some kind of business and have herself called the conqueress of trolls. She knew, however, that even if she could trust the house to dispose of Andy, she could never be happy here after all she'd been through.

"It's a shame that it had to end like this, house." She said, once outside, "I do appreciate that you did the best you could for me." There was a sound of a deep sigh or perhaps sob, coming from within the house. "I appreciate your friendship. I'll try to write to you if I get the chance." She pulled on the troll's coat and wondered if she could have found a pair of his boots somewhere as well, for her feet had only socks, but dismissed it, deciding she would have to make do. She turned to leave.

"Wait." Said the house. "Check inside the window, I have something for you."

She went back and glanced through the opening. There were indeed a pair of troll boots and beside them were some apples and the left over bread.

"Thank you, house." She said. She took them all, turned and left, walking in the troll's oversized boots, down the pebbly path, over the bridge and far away.

The house watched her go and called out a farewell.

Beta ran away from her callous village, found a lucrative job on a wind farm and lived happily ever after.

Andy eventually came back home again. The house did not end up disposing of Andy, in truth, it was too terrified of being alone. Andy wasn't particularly upset at the loss of his slave, nor at the obvious despair and apathy of his house. He learned no lesson; trolls rarely ever do.

The house sank in on itself in grief at love lost, it spent a year or two collecting sad novels and listening to sad music, but it was never quite the same again. It never regained its old, disturbing stateliness. If there was one thing that disgruntled Andy, it was that he could no longer get a word of sense from his once eloquent and learned house.

The end.


End file.
